Abstract
We present The You You Are (UUR), a payphone installation enabling real-time dialogue with a voice-cloned "parallel-self." The experience follows a compact ritual: visitors answer three seed questions, converse via a handset, and receive a printed receipt as a memento. This design addresses common pitfalls in mental-health conversational AI (CAI), such as the uncanny discomfort of self-voice mismatch and the tendency of large language models to offer overly directive advice. By framing the CAI as a multiverse variant and using a familiar physical interface, UUR lowers the demands for a perfect clone required to sustain the interaction’s believability. Developed through two deployments with 571 visitors, including the analysis of 232 conversation logs, the system demonstrates the potential of UUR’s multiverse narrative to enhance user acceptance of voice and content mismatches, and that longer sessions encourage greater self-disclosure.